Saw a post here that mentioned Michael Moorcock as an anarchist 😎
My man moorcock is unapologetic.
I recommend The Land Leviathan (Black Attila conquers racist America) and The Champion of Garathorm (Hero becomes a woman to fulfill destiny and save the day) not because they are good but because they broach taboo topics decades ahead of the curve.
You might like some Ursala Le Guin.
K
I
L
What’s a good place to start? I only really know her for invoking the divine right of kings like a boss 😎
I really like The Dispossessed.
Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe.
I must say this recommendation is delightfully on theme, nicely done 😎
Absolutely, and on topic for this post.
However, I found it a hard, dark read (as is the topic of the book), and she wrote a lot of high quality but easier to read stuff in both sci-fi and fantasy. But it’s so long I read her I don’t even remember the titles except for the Earthsea trilogy.
BTW, IT people might recognize the term Ansible which she invented.
https://www.ursulakleguin.com/novels-and-collections
We read through the earthsea series here and really enjoyed it.
This caught my attention
A Wizard of Earthsea is one of the most beautifully written books in the English language.
I’m a total sucker for beautiful prose, especially Gormenghast.
Do you have any memorable lines that stuck with you?
I have to admit that my read-through was out loud to my children, so I cannot directly recall any particularly potent verses.
Also, outside of some specific memetastic prose in The Wheel of Time and The Stormlight Archive, I am not one for recalling specific wording. I think it’s because of the amount of media I consume. Brain rot by quantity.
Someone want to run that through OCR and paste the text here or is it not relevant.
SO ANYWAY, IN THE ETERNAL CHAMPION ITERATION HE’S CALLED EREKOSE AND HE COMMITS THE ORIGINAL SIN WHICH SETS THE CHAMPION ON HIS CURSED PATH. BUT IN COUNT BRASS IT’S REVEALED THAT IT’S NOT HIS FAULT AND HE CAN FINALLY REST AFTER DESTROYING THE BALANCE USING THE BLACK SWORD IN IT’S PUREST FORM. YOU SEE, IN MOORCOCK’S UNIVERSE, THE SWORD IS THE CHAMPION’S NEMESIS BUT HE HAS TO USE IT TO BREAK FREE WHICH IS MOORCOCK’S BIG ANTI-WAR STATEMENT ABOUT THE FOLLY OF FIGHTING FOR PEACE. THIS IS ALSO EXEMPLIFIED OF COURSE IN ELRICS’S STORY WHERE STORMBRINGER LITERALLY DRINKS THE SOULS OF HIS ENEMIES AND WILL DRINK HIS IF HE STOPS KILLING. BUT IN CORUM’S TALE THERE’S A WHOLE CLASS-ELEMENT TO THIS THAT REALLY SHOWS HOW MOORCOCK WAS ALSO AN ANARCHIST. HAWKMOON IS ALSO LIKE THAT, HE’S A PARALLEL TO THE NOBILITY OF THE SWORD WHEREAS
Re-done with more regular capitalization :)
“In any case, in ‘The Eternal Champion,’ he is called Erekose and commits the original sin that sets the champion on his cursed path. However, in Count Brass it was revealed that it wasn’t his fault, allowing him to finally rest after destroying the balance using the Black Sword in its purest form. In Moorcock’s universe, the sword is the champion’s nemesis, but he has to use it to break free - a statement about the folly of fighting for peace. This is also exemplified, of course, in Elric’s story where Stormbringer literally drinks the souls of his enemies and will drink his own if he stops killing. In Corum’s tale there is a whole class-element to this that really shows how Moorcock was also an anarchist.”
Thanks! I lost motivation after a few lines lol
tldr.
I’ve read all of these and they were super important to my teenage self.
But what about Jerry Cornelius? Without that you aren’t really trying at all.
Haha so right. My original draft lamented how the psychedelic, pansexual, spy with a little gun Jerry Cornelius only lives on in the pale echo of Austin Powers. But then I thought it was too niche.
But ya The Final Programme was my first literary introduction to homosexuality. The weird psychotropic defense towers on the Cornelius estate may have been my first introduction to mind altering states too.
The original velvet suited dandy from swinging London (imo):
I was asking about this author recently (in this post) because a number of people referred to “Stormbringer” as an obvious white-supremacist reference but I couldn’t confirm with a fair amount of digging what everyone else seemed to know off-hand.
Is this author associated with WS? Or is this just an unfortunate result of an easy assumption that anything “storm-x” is WS-adjacent? Since I haven’t read any Moorcock, I don’t yet know. I’m just curious because I try to be aware of such things.
Stormbringer is Elric’s famous sword. You can hear someone shout it in GoT when Joffrey is about to name his sword. It’s evil and drinks the souls of those it kills, passing some of the energy to Elric.
Anyways. Elric is a sickly inbred albino prince of a an ancient , evil, and decaying empire (aka Fantasy Britain). Without his evil sword he is a total weakling pushover.
And people think this is a white power character/symbol? Blows my mind.
Thank you!
And honestly I don’t know that they do, since that thread is the only example I have off-hand where it was implied, and no one took time to explain.
These days I’m not terribly surprised to find WS ideas lurking in high-fantasy and scifi of yesteryear. (I mean, beyond the most pedestrian forms invited by the very notion of differing races/species coexisting.) ETA: I just don’t want to “cancel” some author I don’t know about without knowing why.
FWIW, Moorcock discusses often in his forewords living the hellscape of post blitz London as a preteen. I highly doubt he would ever co-sign on another nazi regime.
Honestly I’d take that as pretty strong evidence against the idle talk from that thread. If only because kids who grew up during and shortly after the war grappled with these ideas earlier than most, and did so during a period where WS was suddenly condemned quite publicly.
Thank you!
I would like some recommendations that are good
Iain M. Banks is a favourite of mine, especially the Culture series. To give an idea of where his head was at, from his essay A Few Notes On The Culture:
Concomitant with this is the argument that the nature of life in space - that vulnerability, as mentioned above - would mean that while ships and habitats might more easily become independent from each other and from their legally progenitative hegemonies, their crew - or inhabitants - would always be aware of their reliance on each other, and on the technology which allowed them to live in space. The theory here is that the property and social relations of long-term space-dwelling (especially over generations) would be of a fundamentally different type compared to the norm on a planet; the mutuality of dependence involved in an environment which is inherently hostile would necessitate an internal social coherence which would contrast with the external casualness typifying the relations between such ships/habitats. Succinctly; socialism within, anarchy without. This broad result is - in the long run - independent of the initial social and economic conditions which give rise to it.
Let me state here a personal conviction that appears, right now, to be profoundly unfashionable; which is that a planned economy can be more productive - and more morally desirable - than one left to market forces.
Lovely. However, every description of the Culture - even his own - falls short of what his books are about: how the search for meaning never ends, and how even a society like the Culture can never be perfect.
That’s way harder.
There’s always his iconic anthihero Elric, or the modern incarnation Geralt of Rivia. I like The Vanishing Tower (Elric IV I think) as a standalone in-media-res story.
I personally enjoy the really weird stuff in Blood: A Southern Fantasy.
Behold the Man won him an award and I thought it was a thought provoking novella, at least for its time.
